


what immortal hand or eye

by windupgirl



Category: Preacher (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-09
Updated: 2017-01-09
Packaged: 2018-09-15 21:56:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9259142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windupgirl/pseuds/windupgirl





	

There’s a hundred miles of flat ochre scrubland between Dallas and Annville, and it all looks the same. They’re walking somewhere nameless out along Route 14 when Fiore stops dead in the middle of the road. DeBlanc’s another thirty paces down the empty blacktop before he notices and wordlessly doubles back, eyes narrowed against the sunset burning firebright behind Fiore like a halo. He’s got that look on his face that he gets when he’s fed up, petulant as a child, with his brow furrowed and his eyes wet.  


It’s not an appropriate time to kiss him, but DeBlanc wants to all the same; it might cheer him up, might shift some of the terrible weight on his shoulders. 

He settles for taking his hand instead and leading him off the tarmac, coaxing the barest ghost of a smile out of him.

“You’ve stopped,” DeBlanc says, and Fiore shuffles his feet, stares down at the clouds of dirt he’s kicked up white as chalkdust, says nothing. “What’s the matter?”

“I’m _tired_ ,” Fiore mutters, sullen—and of course he is, of course. They’ve not slept since they left the East Coast, days ago. Two miles back the car they stole outside Fort Worth lurched and died in the middle of the road, two more miles from the nearest motel and two again from the next car rental. (Fearful symmetry, he thinks, a nonsense snatch of verse that he can’t quite place.) 

“I know, my dear,” he says, low and soothing. “We’re almost there.” The motel’s up ahead, shimmering faintly like a mirage in the heat haze, lights just beginning to flicker on against the gathering twilight.   

Fiore rolls his eyes. He huffs. 

“Can’t you just kill me?”

DeBlanc, being what he is, considers it for a moment, barely. It’s hardly his first choice, but there’s a sweet and sad kind of beauty to the idea. It’d be the work of seconds; he could do it here, now, and they’d be back on their way before full dark, side by side in the purple dusk under the first faint starlight. A bullet between those eyes bright and clear as fast-moving water, and Fiore’d be dead before it hurt—a spent vessel at the roadside, then a flashbulb burst of light and smoke, the scorched earth smell of a lightning strike. 

But he doesn’t say yes. He doesn’t reach for the gun, doesn’t pull the trigger.

“We’re almost there,” he says again, firmer this time.

“Oh, come on. Just shoot me,” Fiore says, halfway to whining. He snatches his hand back out of DeBlanc’s and stands there fairly pouting, hands on his canted hips, the very picture of churlish want.

“No.”

An exasperated sigh, and then he’s bargaining. “What if we did a coin toss?”

“ _No._ ”

“You know it’d be easier,” Fiore insists. He’s getting angry, two hectic spots of bright colour burning high on his cheeks.

“Yeah, for _you_ , perhaps!” DeBlanc replies, and he doesn’t mean to raise his voice, but he does. Death doesn’t count for anything up here, not for the two of them… but he hates the thought of all that light and promise, all that warmth going out of Fiore’s eyes just for the selfish sake of staving off a little discomfort.

“So give me the gun and I’ll do it myself.” His hand is outstretched and shaking, just a little.

“That’s not what I meant,” DeBlanc hisses, and that gives Fiore pause. A curious and uncomfortable breed of silence settles between them in the space between heartbeats, and then Fiore’s hands are back on his hips and he’s looking at his feet again. 

“I know,” he says, gentle but no less grudging. 

“Then _why_ are you still asking me to do it?” he asks, softer now, and there’s a trembling edge to his voice raw as an exposed nerve.

It sends all the fight out of Fiore and he sighs, sagging, like a balloon with its air let out. He doesn’t even say anything, just goes on standing there slumped and morose and breathing too hard until DeBlanc goes to him and kisses the downturned corner of his mouth.

“Look at me,” he says, and Fiore does, already on the verge of smiling; never mind the kiss, DeBlanc suspects he just likes the difference in height. After all, he’s spent an eternity up there in God’s own kingdom looking down on His creation and, further down still, on DeBlanc. It must bring him some small measure of comfort that it should be the same here, on Earth as it is in heaven. “We’ll be there before you know it. Stay with me?”

Fiore’s eyes drop from DeBlanc’s then, but he’s nodding, lip pressed together hard into a firm, fierce line. 

“Always,” he says at last.  


DeBlanc loves him so much that it _hurts_. 


End file.
